“It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.”

“Failure: the renewable resource.”

“Action creates/a taste/for itself.”

“Not even waste/is inviolate./The day misspent,/the love misplaced,/has inside it/the seed of redemption./Nothing is exempt from resurrection.”

“Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in ...”

“A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight.”

“How can he not share his newfound joy with his fellow man? And it is joy. Theres a pure kind of joy in the certainty of belief. The certainty that your life has purpose and meaning.”

“Rush-hour on the A rain. A blind man staggers forth, his cane tapping lightlyown the aisle. He leans against the door,raises a violin to chin, and says Im sorry to bother you, folks. But please. Ju...”

“If you don't know when you're good, how can you know when you're bad?”

“There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence.”

“It is the story that lies around the edges of the photographs, or at the end of newspaper account. It's about the lies we tell others to protect them, and about the lies we tell ourselves in order ...”

“You're the only man I know willing to jump from the top floor of a skyscraper, naked with an axe just to get the bad guy - Selena”